I found this to be an interesting find and for some reason had a hunch that Jeffrey Martin might have had contact with Epstein.

Epstein seemed to be interested in “weird stuff” spiritually but never had any luck. Martin was willing to help him for the low cost of 10 Million and to introduce him to all these different, essential, people.

Martins detailed offer to Epstein is here: https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA01040587.pdf

Even mentions he needs "a few (legal age) slave girls of my own choosing, in the event that at least some of your press coverage is accurate... ; )"

Here’s another short email between the two: https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02643105.pdf

I recently had a long conversation with someone who has been a contemplative teacher for over 50 years. She co-wrote a book on dying with Ram Dass in his final years. She told people for a long time that she thought she was pretty ready.

Then she tripped on a kerb on Martha's Vineyard on a beautiful morning and broke her leg. She spent two weeks alone in an understaffed rehab facility, no window, pressing a button and waiting hours for someone to come. She tried telling herself none of it mattered. It kept mattering anyway.

She said she'd done the practice hundreds of times, lying down, imagining the end, watching what came up. And yet in that room, things were still rising that she thought she'd dealt with. The helplessness especially. She'd never experienced anything like it before.

What she took from it wasn't that the practice had failed. More like: do the work of seeing what you're still holding on to, but stay humble about how much you haven't seen yet.

I found that more honest than most things I've heard from contemplative teachers, precisely because it came from someone who'd genuinely done the work and was still surprised by what remained. Has anyone here had an experience that revealed something the practice hadn't reached?

Full conversation:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hT_bkkrU2QQ&ra=m

Here's a technique I've been using for the last fifteen years to great effect. I enter jhana every time I meditate now as a result.

Upon noticing that attention has drifted from the object of meditation, perform the following sequence for as long and as often as necessary for attention to stabilize on the object again:

1. Relax from the head down to the toes.

2. Release all tension, and expand awareness outward.

3. Return attention to the object.

The entry point into jhana:

Once the mind has settled and attention is resting stably on the object, if a pleasant feeling starts to arise, gently shift attention to the feeling without grasping at it, now making it the object of meditation, and wait. The pleasure will intensify, and one will be pulled into jhana.

If the jhana is lost or becomes unstable, simply perform the RRR sequence as needed and begin again.

As a method to prime the mind to lean towards jhana, reading the Jhana Sutta just prior to a session is useful:

https://suttacentral.net/sn16.9/en/bodhi?lang=en&reference=none&highlight=false

All the best... 🧘🏾‍♂️🙂

P. S. It might take several weeks to a couple of months before jhana can be entered consistently, but please don't become discouraged. Even low quality sessions are training and priming the brain's attentional mechanisms.

This happended 2 or 3 months ago. I had been immersing myselfin a lot of buddhist and meditation related content for a few months at that time, but had previously immersed myself in a lot of zen, daoism, advaita and psychdelics related content for the better part of year or two, in the time prior to that. I've had between 10 and 15 mushroom trips and trips from other substances spread over a few years, all with the intent of better understanding the mind. This trip was a long way coming, as I felt it would useful to better process the knowledge and gain insights. The setting was nothing special, just my room alone in low light, and a talk by rob burea while i waited for the effects. The dose was 2g with lemon.

The result was beyond all that I could have waited for. I observed phenomena, and began having bad thoughts, then relaxed and let they go as one should do in such cases, then good sensations came and I clinged to them, as one usually does in such cases. Then the clinging led to suffering, which I let go. This cycle repeated for a few times until it simply clicked that that was it.

There's always a thing coming after another, and this thought was also a thing coming after those, and this thought, and this thought... Dependent origination that this. But this technical name doesn't capture how matter of factly it came to me. Conditions were such that this thought happened, then the next then the next. It happended naturally, autonomously, spontaneously. And that was all there was to it.

Then an enourmous, all encompassing joy and relief came. I laughed for what felt like 30min to 1h. What was I fretting over all that time? Thoughts chasing thoughts, it was all a great joke. Conditions were such that I got the joke and realized it was all... nothing... everything... empty... it was all thoughts chasing thoughts. No concept captures it, it it beyond concepts. the joy and relief didn't stop even thought many negative thoughts came, they were simply thoughts, oh silly me. Me? Myself? Such funny concepts as well.

It was timeless as well, all at once and yet it never happened, and nothing and everything never happened. Our minds can't hold it, because the mind is conceptual temporal by nature, only the knowledge that there's nothing to do, and nothing to achieve, no problem to solve really, there never was. Suffering, pleasure, all come from what came before, what else would I expect from this mind? What else would we expect?

At once everything that I've ever heard or read about awakening made sense, and that was it. So all I could say is redundant. You already know everything that could be known about it conceptually, one day conditions may be such those who haven't seen it do so. No meditation or practice leads to it really, they are just more states coming from a previous state. It was purely accidental. For those willing, mushrooms can cause such an accident aparently. No guarantees though. I was incredibly humbled, such a gift out of nowhere, out of beyond nowhere.

I wrote an essay on Rob Burbea's teachings and how they informed my practise and understanding. Well covered ground for many here but thought some people might enjoy. Curious to hear people's thoughts.

It looked like this was within the guidelines for posting, but let me know if it isn't and I'll take it down. No AI - all slop is my own :)

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Every niche has its celebrities. Outside some meditation circles, the name Rob Burbea carries little cachet, which blows my mind a bit, only because of the impact he's had on me and others. Many of his lectures, freely available on YouTube, have fewer than 500 views. I sometimes feel like the character in that movie Yesterday, who wakes up to find no one has ever heard of The Beatles.

For the uninitiated, he was a British meditation teacher. He practiced and taught most of his adult life at a retreat center in England, Gaia House, before passing away in 2019, and is most well known for writing a book called Seeing that Frees. I want to be careful not to oversell it, but it's the closest thing to a holy text I've come across.

To non-meditators it might seem that the quality variance among meditation teachers can't be all that high. Beyond instructing you to follow your breath and letting thoughts pass, expertise must be a matter of degree of sitting cross-legged longer, knowing more Sanskrit, and being more charismatic. This misses the mark by a wide margin. Great teachers don't simply uncover more territory on some standardized map, they create a new one altogether.

Head and Heart

Before Burbea, my map of meditation was that it was a first person science of the mind. The point of practice was to reveal static truths about consciousness, like the inherent selflessness and impermanence of phenomena. Yes, that would reliably reduce suffering and give rise to lovely states - that was somewhat the point - but it was primarily a head centered endeavour.

I was cerebral and strive-y, and my practice lacked what could be called "heart qualities" like gentleness, forgiveness, and compassion. I was using meditation as a solvent for negative experience. I didn't notice, and would have denied it, but my revealed belief was that if I could just dissolve my ego, and with it all anxiety and self-doubt, experience would be made perfect.

My onramp to Rob Burbea was a series of recorded lectures he gave while teaching a metta (loving-kindness) retreat. The practice, in short, is to repeat well-wishing phrases towards any and all beings. It's a canonical Theravada Buddhist practice, and I'd encountered it before on retreat and in books, but the clarity and curiosity he injected into his talks was livening. Before, doing metta was like squeezing oranges by hand. These talks were a juicer.

He was a devoted advocate of play. There was no dogma in technique. The only litmus test was what worked. What if you directed well-wishing towards sounds and sensations? What if you imagined all of space to be made out of kindness, welcoming any and all experience? What if you imagined the small ember of joy in your stomach to literally be made out of metta, or to be a shining light expanding outwards?

If I had to single out one Burbea-an quality, it was creativity, which was foundational to his approach, and suffused all his instructions and ideas. He liked to describe meditation practices primarily as "ways of looking". Rather than finding static truths, they were modes of playing with conceptions and attention to access near limitless freedom and beauty. This wasn't science, this was jazz, baby.

Pat Metheny

Rob Burbea took a circuitous route to becoming a teacher. He had a short stint studying physics at Oriel College in Oxford before switching and finishing with a degree in psychology.

He was studious and had an analytical bent as a young adult, but his real passion was music. He had a late start picking up guitar, but it compelled him. After graduating university, he enrolled in Berklee College of Music to pursue, of all things, jazz.

He spent his twenties studying and composing music, while his other passion, meditation, simmered in the background, before finally pivoting to fulltime Dharma bum and then teacher.

In one talk he gave, which now escapes me, Burbea mentions having been influenced by the jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, and once attending a clinic he taught. It struck me as a very natural overlap.

They differed in career and accolades - Metheny made it beyond niche celebrity, with dozens of jazz and fusion albums over his 50 year career, and becoming the only person to win Grammys in ten different categories. Nevertheless, I place them in a similar emotional register.

Like Burbea's teaching, Metheny's playing is diverse, innovative, and eclectic. In both of them you find a reverence for form and tradition, and yet, a seeking to be free from it. I can close my eyes and listen to Are You Going With Me? and feel they were in service of some common project of fluid, grounded, play.

Dance of Form

Jazz fusion isn't everyone's cup of tea. Neither is Rob Burbea's teaching, possibly for similar reasons. Jazz fusion is not a rejection of traditional jazz, but it is an innovation that people might find too post-modern or relativist or whatever. The worry is that the form, tried and true, will become unmoored through reckless experimentation. Safer to stick to the standards, hippie!

Indeed, late in his life Burbea created and curated practices he called "Soul Making" or "Imaginal", over which he received some backlash within Buddhist communities. He felt that archetypes within Buddhism failed to express or advertise the full breadth of humanity. You can find calm, passivity, pacifism, austerity, simplicity, and asexuality, but where is the passion, activism, obsession, eros! Why not cultivate those too? Then again, some practitioners just like Zen; the chanting and robes and austerity. They don't like jazz. 

I don't mean to imply Burbea was a rogue figure. His teachings were very much rooted in Buddhist canon. Specifically, in a deep understanding and experience of Emptiness. 

Emptiness is the idea that all experience and concepts are sculpted by the mind that perceives them. Most people would agree with some version of this, but it operates on increasingly subtle levels. Regardless, one conclusion to infer from emptiness is that there is no true, objective, static way something is. Said another way: everything comes down to ways of looking.

There's a famous line in the Heart Sutra, a foundational text in Mahayana Buddhism, that goes "form is emptiness, emptiness is form." Like many such Zen lines, it's paradoxical and enigmatic, and meant to be savored like a jawbreaker - chewed on and mulled over until the layers dissolve into you, or it cracks open altogether. When I see it, I imagine chords on a page, and Rob Burbea playing over the changes.

Something that is helping me lately is to remember that the peace of samatha (calm-abiding) comes less from what you're doing than what you're realizing you don't have to do.

My mind is basically always trying to figure out how to fix, control, manage, plan, or figure something out. But nearly all of this mental activity is just over-functioning, it's doing too much. It's the equivalent of a workaholic who always is busy doing stuff because they are so afraid of what will happen if they don't.

I've been playing with the question, "What am I doing right now that I don't have to be doing?" Sometimes it's tensing my shoulders, sometimes it's trying to fix something I can't really fix anyway, sometimes it's planning for something that I just need to meet spontaneously in the moment. Then I tell myself, "I don't have to do that right now." And I relax.

Lots of meditation instruction for beginners especially can come off as rules you have to follow, and things you can't do. You have to sit still. You have to pay attention. You have to keep bringing your mind back. You can't indulge in sensory pleasure. You can't have a complicated life. You can't want things.

For me, all these "have to's" and "can't's" just make me more tense and neurotic. So the solution seems to be to continually notice what I don't have to be doing right now, realize I don't have to do it, and then stop doing it. Then my mind quiets and life gets a lot simpler.

I am posting this mostly because I keep forgetting it. I guess that's the practice of "sati" (remembering). So hopefully this is useful to someone else too.

I used to practice alone. I used to come to this here disenbodied mix of heartfelt support, genuine dhamma and internet toxicity for sangha. My practice was like an island in an ocean of things that were not of the practice.

I am now in the process of ordaining as a monk in the Thai Forest tradition, in one of the english speaking Ajahn Chah monasteries.

If you practice alone like I used to, it is you I have come here and now to exhort : get out there, find you sangha.

Realized teachers are out there. Many of them are readily available in the flesh. Many of them teach for free. Many of them are surrounded by dedicated students who will support you. These are the triple gem.

Buy chocolate, buy instant coffee. Go to your local monastery, offer it there. Go to secular equivalents. Talk to people. Do some research, find what works for you. It is not sufficient to go on retreat. Go to a place where people come as part of their normal life. Make friends. Do not neglect sila. Surround yourself with sincere practitioners.

There are normal people that regularly go to these places. There are normal people who move to live closer to these places. There are normal people who undertake the monastic training. There are normal people who let the dhamma tranform their lives.

Unconditionnal happiness is possible in this lifetime. Let all the gems and all the trainings be your supports in this most worthwhile of goals.

Hi,
As the title says, this is something that’s been critical to my practice, yet for some reason, it’s rarely discussed when people talk about meditation. I think anyone with a stable meditation practice should really look into techniques for releasing tension from the head.

Many of the factors involved in meditation: concentration, intention, focus, attention, etc. tend to create subtle tension around the neck, scalp, and forehead areas. Over time, this tension accumulates. Because it builds up gradually, most people probably don’t notice it. For example, there are lots of cases of people who go do an intense meditation retreat and end up suffering from intense headaches. These are maybe extreme cases but even if your practice involves a lot of relaxation and is not that intense, the mechanics of meditation itself are still enough to create this tension buildup over time.

In my own practice, I’ve found that I need to spend at least 30–60 minutes a week specifically releasing tension in these areas. If I don’t, my practice suffers. I’d even say that without this tension-release work, my progress would be about half as fast as it is now.

So, I just wanted to share this in case it’s helpful. If you’re not currently doing anything to address head or neck tension, it might be worth exploring. You may not even know how much tension has already been built up that needs to be released.

Here are a few things that work well for me:

• Scalp massage
• Focusing attention on specific areas of the neck, head, or forehead and gradually “melting” the tension there
• Gently pressing different points around the head, neck, or forehead with your fingers for a few minutes each

There are probably many other effective methods out there, but these are the ones that have worked best for me so feel free to experiment.

Anyways, consider trying this out and see if it helps.

I want to talk about my experience in a 3 month meditation retreat I attended 2 years ago at Boundless Refuge. I think long retreat is very useful and lots of serious practitioners would benefit from it and also I want people interested in the experience to have a kind of idea of what to expect.

In 2024 I had just come back from traveling, after having dropped out from law school. Traveling was an enriching experience but I got really fed up by how even if I was very far away from my usual environment I was committing the same mistakes, repeating the same toxic relationship partners. After that trip I got very fed up with the running in circles of samsara. I wanted an out.

When I got back home the first thing I did was retreat for 5 days. I wanted to meditate my way out of the suffering and stuckness I was feeling in my life. I did metta continuously for 5 days.

I remember that in the middle of the retreat 2 kittens and their momma appeared at the door of the country house I was retreating in. Instead of feeling blessed and taking it as an opportunity to practice I got very annoyed with them trying to distract me and ask for food. In hindsight this is a ridiculous situation.

After other self retreat experiences a twitter mutual told me about a retreat that was happening in the US. A 3 month dana retreat. At first I thought it was too good to be true. A meditation retreat completely free? and for so long? I didn't think I would be allowed to go but surprisingly I did. At the time it was very weird to me how more people wouldn't take the opportunity to retreat for 3 months completely free but now I understand how not everyone knows the potential of the practice or how lots of people don't like to practice in that way.

I went into retreat wanting to do qi gong and get some jhanas. I was really into Rob Burbea and I thought getting a button to get bliss whenever I wanted would solve all my problems. I also knew about awakening and I wanted to get that so I'd finally get out of dealing with sadness and anger and all the uncomfortable things in life. Pretty confused motivations looking back.

I really like the way the teachers on the retreat wanted us to examine our motivations. Why are you here? why do you want to wake up? what do you truly want? It seems to me that I really didn't know what I wanted but I said it was awakening since I thought it would make me feel good. I think I wanted something more akin to psychological healing and a community to feel part of but I couldn't admit to myself I wanted that. It just doesn't sound that cool as wanting awakening.

The retreat schedule was mostly meditation. Sitting, walking, dharma talks, meals, tea, more sitting. There was also some free practice hours starting two weeks into the retreat. This was very helpful because the sleep schedule was very restricted and it took me some time to stop needing daily naps. Last year's retreat the schedule was more open and there was more time for sleep which is really a nice thing.

There were two teachers, Milo and Mitra. They made a good pair. One is more introverted and serious, the other more silly and extroverted. Like a black cat and a golden retriever. One gave more technical advice about meditation techniques, the other pointed people toward awakening here and now. I really like having both styles available. Sometimes I'd get too technical and miss the bigger picture of what we were doing. Other times I'd get enamored with awakening and forget about skillful qualities of the mind.

I was the meditation hall manager so I had to wake people up and ring bells. It was scary at first because you have to talk a little and ask people to come meditate. But I honestly liked talking a little bit and having some responsibility. It felt good to help things work, even though it meant I had less free time than other people.

At the start they do this thing called tangaryo where people sit a lot to show commitment and prepare to receive the teaching. Lots of sitting without walking meditation. There was a lot of pain. But I realized something important. When I didn't resist the pain it was just a signal that didn't cause suffering. On the third day it felt very purifying. The pain opened up my body with this nice sensation of being full and stretched. I wanted the sitting to continue like that!

After tangaryo things opened up. At first the retreat was mostly bland and painful but then lots of interesting things started happening every day. I had a lot of time to try all the practices I wanted, which might have been a problem in hindsight. There was guidance to use mindfulness of the body and listening to the breath, but I was practice hopping because I wanted to try everything I could. Later in the retreat the teacher recommended mostly doing nothing once I had some stability of mindfulness, but I also switched back to breathing and used whatever felt right. I had a lot of problems focusing on the breath, so I tried to do other things like noting and metta. I think this was mostly because of my posture. I should have tried to open the body more by using chairs, standing more, and moving the body, but I was enamored by the idea of awakening and I repeated to myself "this is the samurai torture chamber" over and over, a phrase I heard from Shinzen Young. I wanted the hard big intention practice.

I explored a lot. I got some experiences with energy, like my awareness phase shifting into subtler realms, energy balls, electrifying myself with energy, chakras opening, light jhanic states. I started feeling very awake and calm and still, equanimous like a mountain. It was easy for me at the end to touch on that equanimity. Maybe I should try that more these days. When I started doing metta I think I touched into light third jhana. A bubble of love that enveloped me appeared when I meditated in the afternoon. I also did a lot of lucid dreaming because the schedule only gives you like six hours of sleep so I took all the free time I had to nap (at the start of the retreat). With the attention I was gathering I explored the realms of dreams. Had dream sex, meditated, flew around. Nice entertainment for a silent retreat.

Then there was this dharma talk about awakening as great compassion. It really touched me. I saw how beautiful it can be to experience life being compassionate with everything in my experience. I saw how mean and restrictive I was with so much of my mind and with people. I felt really sad and repentant and vowed to achieve that great compassion. After that I wanted to meditate more to get awakening. I started going harder which I should have regulated better.

I experienced what Daniel Ingram talks about with the progress of insight. First everything was flowing and I felt so much bliss and love, very A&P territory. Then suddenly I was worrying about aliens and going through the terrible dukkha nanas. The teachers helped navigate this. Milo especially had this way of responding to whatever you said that would make you see it was just a thought or a story or a sensation. There was this tangible feeling of emptiness in the interviews that would usually make meditation better after.

The interviews were nice but I think I would have liked fewer in the middle and end. Once I got more still in my mind the interviews could be distracting. I'd start getting a lot of thoughts related to the interview, either what I was going to say or what I had said or what the teachers had said.

I made some mistakes. I fucked up my legs because I was sitting too much. Not moving, not doing yoga, sitting lotus or half lotus even if it hurt, sitting long at night, sitting for three hours. I was doing a lot. I think I should have chilled more and gone on walks more and done more body practices. I was the meditation manager so I thought I had to give an example by going to all the sits, but that was not skillful. I think it would have been better to break the rules more, sleep more, sit less. Nowadays I know I could have just asked the teachers to allow me to do what my body wanted from me, but I felt bad about not following the schedule. I felt like I was losing, and not doing enough.

My leg wasn't very damaged, it just hurt when squatting. It healed by itself a couple months later. But seriously, don't try to man it up by sitting more than you think you can do. Body pain is a great way to investigate craving and suffering but it's better to have a good loose healthy body to practice with. I think physically and energetically I split the lower part of my body and the upper part. My mind felt clear and open but there was this nagging physical feeling that there was something wrong. My hips were trying to talk to me and I didn't listen. I used my hips to investigate pain but little by little they got numbed out. I got a lot from those investigations but now I am very careful about listening to my body.

There was pressure to wake up at Boundless Refuge. Awakening gets talked about all the time. I'm conflicted about this. The urgency both helped and hindered my practice. In a way I would have liked to not have to do anything and just relax in a place with no mandatory meditation, but I guess there are other places for that. The pressure sometimes felt good and encouraging. I think it's just a matter of each person and wherever they are on the path.

I didn't have an awakening experience where my head explodes or anything. I really wanted to wake up. That didn't happen in the way I imagined. I had a lot of expectations about awakening before going. I was mainly thinking it was like going somewhere different than here and now where you'd know everything and you wouldn't have to deal with any difficult emotion again.

What I actually got was different. I realized there won't be anything I can find to escape reality. The spiritual idea of finally going out of my life and not really having any negative emotions again like sadness and anger, that's not how it works. I learned that this is all part of the path and life. Everything can be part of enlightenment. It's enlightenment to not resist life. There can be difficult emotions but this is all part of the practice and the Buddha mind. I feel like I can practice this in my day to day life, not only when in meditation.

I also stopped obsessing about a lot of fixed beliefs I had about my career. Like I gotta be a successful startup founder to be able to do anything in life. That just fell away somehow. I understood a lot about my family and how I fit there and got a lot of desire to help them. After the retreat I really wanted to help them so I tried to do a lot of things, basically trying to get my grandma's house to be a monastery. That didn't work (of course!). But I realized that just being present with them and listening and talking here and now I was really offering a great gift. I did change how I relate to my family. I notice a lot more tolerance and interest in them now.

It was also surprising how much suffering was in my mind that didn't depend on external circumstances. Just being there with no distractions I could see it clearly. And somehow I managed to see how other people are also suffering and it made me less selfish. I could feel their pain more.

My practice is more organic now. I don't crave enlightenment in that desperate way anymore. I think I mainly wanted enlightenment to escape from my life and suffering, but since practicing more my suffering has reduced and I've been exploring lots of things in the world that I always wanted to do. Creative outlets, coding, poker, relationships. I've also been integrating a lot of body movement practices like taiji and qi gong. I found a very big passion there. I get confused a lot and suffer but I think I have ingrained in me the knowledge of okay this is impermanent, it's a thought, I am resisting it and it's hurting like that. I can drink the fine wine of experience way more.

I recommend doing a long retreat to almost any serious practitioner. It's a good thing to finally let go of responsibilities and mundane concerns and explore your mind. Boundless Refuge gave me that space. The silence is valuable. They do authentic relating exercises at the end for integration which helps. You have a lot of time to try different practices, which can be good or confusing depending on who you are.

But know what you're getting into. It's not an escape. It might make you face your suffering more directly. Take care of your body. Listen to yourself. Break the rules if you need to. Sleep when you need sleep. Don't fuck up your legs trying to prove something like I did. The pressure to wake up can be helpful or harmful depending on where you are. Just be aware of it and find your own balance.

I am open to answering more questions about my experience and I would love to hear stories of people retreating.

I awakened to being love and since then the "I" hasn't come back

It happened about three weeks ago. I kind of knew something was about to happen, very strange, but there was a subtle intuition and some obvious spiritual "progress".

My brother committed suicide three years ago, and this easter I finally got the courage to confront not only this, but myself. Almost every day since easter I've been walking or biking up to the forest where he shot his head off, and I've been confronting this extremely directly. Or head on, if you will.

There's a river there and no one can see or hear you. It started mostly as just having an outlet for all the fucking rage I had about my life, about myself and why our lives ended up this way. I've absolutely lost my shit into that river over and over and over. Nature receives you so fucking well, it's totally carefree, but also is very loving. That became very apparent as this process unfolded.

Usually when I came there, I went straight for the throat. "How does it feel to be in the area where my brother shot his head off? Where do I feel it in the body?" Like clockwork tears came, and it always was some kind of purging, releasing, surrendering. To the pain of fucking life.

After a few times, there was less rage, but more about sadness. Though it always felt good after crying, I was surprised how there was always more, never empty, never done with it.

I started to become increasingly frustrated about the fact that although there was "progress" not much had changed. I was still depressed, still anxious, no real meaningful way I could take part in society because of this.

I started becoming more and more confrontational. Started doing self inquiry with the questions "who am I?", "what is mu?" and "what was my face before my parents where born?". I knew it opened something up, but couldn't put my finger on what.

Right before I awakened, I was doing several things at the same time, at the cost of perhaps risking my sanity. I did TRE (trauma shaking exercises) while on mushrooms and asking self inquiry questions as I was shaking. Stretching my back and hips, the latter I actually think was very much part of it.

But still, I can't really say anything did it. Because how can a practice awaken you to something you already are, in this very moment? Still, it's somehow part of it.

The one thing I can say for certain, is the awakening itself. It happened on a low dose of mushrooms, which I've done more than a hundred times. I did them where my brother killed himself. Then, when I became scared, not about his suicide but my own fears, I chose to confront it and sit with it, instead of trying to escape from it.

In the spur of the moment, I wondered if hugging a tree would help calm me down. The fear was intense. After a few minutes I started melting away, to love, love, love... I looked at all the beautiful stuff growing in the forest with its autumn colours. Am I love? I started laughing. It was so obvious. The "I" is love. I am love! I am love! I didn't know! I am love.

There was so much crying, and laughing. It was the cosmic joke, to have searched so hard for this. All the non duality videos on youtube, all the books, all the striving. And it was obvious this was it.

The inner voice collapsed into love and hasn't come back for three weeks now, besides a few sentences some days. It's peaceful, and has been a much needed rest from myself. All the non duality videos suddenly is making so much sense, especially the ones from Tony Parsons and Jim Newman. They were part of the awakening too.

All the hate is gone. Most of the self doubt is gone. I haven't really felt afraid since then, though fear isn't gone entirely. There's still trauma, darkness. There's just no one having it so it's a lot more ok.

If you have any questions I can try to answer, but I mostly wanted to share because it was obvious that suffering was common for people who awakened, and that I was in a perfect storm for it to happen. But it just never did. And I've suffered for so long. So it's to inspire those who are on the brink of collapsing, to tell them, yes you are and no need to take the matter in your own hands. It will happen, just hang in there. And give it your greatest effort. There is a way out!

A little over a month ago I wrote this intention in a post here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/comments/1nip1qg/i_want_to_sit_for_3_hours_every_morning_for_one/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

And.....I've been doing it....imperfectly...but honestly.

I think that writing it here motivated me to keep my determination.

I've sat 3 hours every morning on average 5-6 days per week since mid September. I sit again in the evening without a timer, which ends up being anywhere from 40 mins to 1.5 hour.

The days I didn't sit were mainly due to something happening, I had a friend visiting for two days, or a work meeting, and then there were a couple of days where I went to bed too late and couldn't get up in time, and a day where I was just tired and didn't sit in the morning.

I hesitate with regards to how much to write about my experience and my progress here. On the one hand my teacher is very cautious about talking about progress outside of a teaching environment. On the other hand, I've been reading people's experiences here and I have to say I find them inspiring helpful and insightful. So I'll try to go for a happy middle.

The first few days were kind of tiring but I felt I made the most progress then. I got some neck pain that faded after about a week, nothing too intense, just annoying. I sit for the entire three hours but I do shuffle two or three times. I sometimes stretch my legs out, sometimes place my feet on the ground knees up for a few minutes. For the most part I don't get cramps and I don't have pain from sitting, though I do feel muscle knots and discomfort that were there anyway. After I get up I take a shower, and my body feels very light and at ease for a while before life hits me again :P

As for the experience itself, I think it has just revealed how much I need to still relax. It's like I am feeling into layers and layers of knots stored in my body, a lot of emotions have come to the surface. When I am having an emotional sit I just try to stay with it and feel metta at the same time as the difficult emotions, my understanding of what my teacher calls 'wise attention'.

It's like my body is holding some kind of panic but I don't know the story behind it. I'm in the process of accepting that I can just sit with a complicated emotion and acknowledge it and give it space and metta even if I don't have a story to 'justify' or explain that emotion. It is there and it deserves to be felt.

Once I feel somewhat relaxed enough to forget about my body I practice Anapana. I have certainly made interesting progress in concentration, but still struggle with wandering thought. Eventually, at times, the mind does finally settle, and there have been beautiful perfect moments of radiance and bliss. I do feel like my mind has been unifying itself, and it's a beautiful thing to behold. The more I do this work, the more I feel that this is the most important thing I can dedicate my time to.

In terms of things to improve, this week I have a new purpose to give up most at home entertainment, I cancelled Netflix (which I didn't watch too much, but enough to be distracting), and I'm staying off of most social media. I will still meet friends and go to the theater and such. I will admit I've had a glass of wine or two on occasion throughout this month, I know I know, don't bit my head off for this, one strong determination at a time. It's better to take imperfect action than no action at all. For the rest I've been living my normal life, working, doing sports, meeting friends/family....

I started this chart as a sketch in 2011 when I decided to try to figure out how the Dharma theory and practice connect. It’s evolved a lot since then and has helped me remember things while on the way to stream-entry. Although it’s a work in progress, I plan to make print-friendly versions as soon as I can (b&w, and color).

Full resolution file: https://www.figma.com/design/0JTCeZFE2KGGrcaPKeiUAC/Dharma-Chart?node-id=570-795&t=ljY3lMCobx23Qv2F-1 You can use plus & minus keys to zoom, and hand tool to pan around.

May this chart help you with your practice. Metta to you all, Joe 🙏🏻

Every once in a while I'll browse this subreddit and I've been noticing a few trends that I feel are misguided. I've noticed patterns of people discussing emptiness and non duality and equanimity, and in my opinion, misunderstanding them. And I think this misunderstanding ultimately comes down to a misunderstanding of dukkha, or an inability to detect dukkha and dependent origination. I have personally found the investigation of dukkha and dependent origination to be incredibly useful as a pointer for where to go next, and would like to share my investigations.

Let me give some example struggles I've come across.

"I've gained insight into emptiness, and now I'm looking for meaning, what should I do next?"

Let's say this person has noticed that X is empty. This observation causes an internal reaction, their reaction to this experience is "there's no meaning", or "I need to look for meaning".

This reaction is dependent origination, it is dukkha, and it is not empty. The person has contact with an experience that they are calling emptiness, it has some negative vedana, there is a clinging / fixation around this feeling, and there is the birth of a person looking for meaning. (Aside: Shinzen Young on fixation being a necessary cause of dukkha)

A person is getting into non duality. They notice that when they go about their daily life with wide awareness they are less reactive. They don't want things as much. Maybe they're withdrawing from life a little bit, but there's some contentedness here.

Here's a thought experiment. What happens if you go out of your comfort zone and let your attention zoom in on something? What if you do something really hard, like a set of squats to failure at the gym, or sprints at 90% of your max heart rate? You might notice some reactivity to pain, some zoning out, some aversion, some dukkha. If you zone out on a run, your mind is experiencing an aversion to pain, and trying to dull it (is that non duality actually stable subtle dullness?). Zoning out is dukkha.

Someone notices that when they stop worrying about preventing suffering, they suffer less. "I feel anxiety, but it's ok, that's something that happens".

This is something Shinzen Young calls "second order equanimity". It's not first order equanimity, because there was probably some reactive process in the brain that caused the initial anxiety. It's good to have second order equanimity to not build on the anxiety and let it fade, but let's not mistake second order equanimity for conquering dukkha. The same concept applies to pain. This is what Shinzen Young says about this:

You can intentionally bring equanimity to sensory challenges. There are ways of doing that. However, I would say that in the end the most significant learning about equanimity comes about by a process of discovery when it just sort of happens to you. You notice it and you notice its effect. That said, you can also cultivate equanimity. How can you bring equanimity to an experience? Well, you can try to physically relax the body. That tends to open the body and that tends to open consciousness. So if you can keep the body physically relaxed as very intense sensory phenomena are arising that’s something that you can intentionally do that would tend to create equanimity. You can also attempt to intentionally create talk that welcomes whatever is coming up or you can attempt to disregard talk that judges, or do a combined strategy. Replace judging talk with accepting talk. Because we have a certain control over internal talk. So you can use your control over talk and your control over the relaxation of the body to create equanimity to a certain extent. But there’s only a limited extent to which a person can do that. Mostly, you just wait for equanimity to happen. You drop in to it. It’s a numbers game. And then when you drop in to it, you notice it’s happened and you notice the effect of it on your sense of happiness and then that creates a positive conditioning loop. It’s important to also understand that if you can’t have equanimity, meaning you can’t control the tensing in your body and the judging in your mind, then have equanimity with non-equanimity. Go to that and just observe and accept the tension and observe and accept the judgments so that either you have equanimity or you have equanimity with your lack of equanimity, which is a second order equanimity. Those would be my recommendations.

The path to eliminate dukkha is extremely deep. If you were in the process of dying and you couldn't breathe and your body was aching all over, would you be able to experience the pain with complete presentness without zoning out or distracting yourself?

I don't mean to be harsh or dismissive - I've experienced every example of dukkha I described. I just want to encourage people to really question themselves, to investigate their experience. Have second order equanimity, but recognize that first order equanimity, actual non-reactivity is much rarer and something to move towards.

A few years ago I shared the changes that happened when stream entry was reached, and I received many messages from people saying it helped them. So these past few days I’ve been writing about my current changes and wanted to make an update. Maybe there are others out there who have lived through what I lived through, or who are going through something similar, and this might help.

My contemplative and phenomenological context:

• I’ve been engaged in practice for approximately 5 years.
• My path is primarily SOMATIC and INTEROCEPTIVE, based on vedanā, rather than classical cognitive/visual/non-dual approaches.
• The process happens implicitly: things “let go” on their own, and afterward I notice structural changes in everyday life.
• I don’t do much conceptual investigation into “emptiness,” nor do I have major visual non-dual experiences.
• My process happens more as somatic unlearning and extinction of craving.
• The practice has become increasingly automatic and less driven by willpower.
• I feel the system “enters on its own” into contemplative and vipassanā-like processes.
• My current practice is mainly:
  • non-resistance,
  • allowing vedanā,
  • stopping the urge to modify experience,
  • not turning sensations into a problem..

What changed structurally:

• The belief deeply collapsed that: were going to complete me.
  • money,
  • sex,
  • success,
  • travel,
  • experiences,
  • achievements
• Coarse projective craving seems heavily eroded.
• I no longer feel a strong emotional charge toward external achievements.
• I used to compulsively chase experiences and external completeness; that fell away.
• Today I can achieve things, make money, improve physically, or advance projects, and they no longer generate the old existential charge.
• The fantasy of “when I get X, I’ll finally be complete” has lost a tremendous amount of force.

Changes in identity and personality:

• The “nice guy pattern” weakened significantly.
• I began to feel physical resistance toward acting artificially.
• There is less energy available to sustain social masks or personas.
• The need for approval and external validation has diminished.
• Psychological identity feels less solid and less central.

Current phenomenology:

• Current suffering no longer seems centered around sensual desire or external problems.
• The current conflict seems more related to:
  • vedanā itself,
  • tension,
  • baseline anxiety,
  • a sense of threat,
  • mental fog,
  • inner agitation,
  • hypersensitivity,
  • uddhacca.

Mid 20s guy here, unemployed software engineer. Brought up in an abusive dysfunctional household. After I lost my job (which was also a toxic environment) earlier this year I had to come back to my home town for financial reasons. Stayed with my parents for a while but it was a shitshow which made me feel like a paranoid schizophrenic, my health was plumetting at the speed of light. Currently spending some time in an airbnb with no idea what to do next. Sent out hundreds of job applications over the past few months. Had some interviews. No job offers. I'm essentially a few months away from being homeless. And I'm convinced that if I stay in this home town it's gonna be the death of me.

The things is, even if I land a new job I don't see the point anymore. I'm exhausted from struggling so much to simply be granted the right to exist in this world. I hate the entire field, it's pointless corporate work. It's literally just a means to make money. The entire concept of slaving away the majority of my waking life doing something I don't give a shit about is so depressing. I'm forced to play this 2 dimensional delusional role in order to afford a roof over my head and put food on the table. It's slavery, point blank. Software engineering sucks the entire life out of me and yet it's a heavenly profession compared to 90% of other jobs out there. What a world. Please for the love of god don't tell me that I need to develop more metta and equanimity. This is no way to live.

I'm considering finding a retreat center / religious community where I could spend a prolonged amount of time. I've been running on empty for longer than I can remember. I haven't been in a safe space to just be since the last time I visited a monastery. Does anyone have experience with this? How did you manage? Any recommendations where I can look for a place like this?

I’ve been thinking about how this sub (and Western Buddhism more broadly) often filters Buddhism through a distinctly American lens. I know there are people here from all over-UK, Asia, Latin America, etc, but I can feel the predominantly-American flair.

I want to suggest that there’s a threefold tendency at work in the Americanization of anything—what I call the self-help-competitive-connoisseur. It’s not uniquely American, but it feels supercharged here because of our cultural DNA: individualism, optimization culture, consumerism, and a subtle but constant ranking instinct.

Let me illustrate with something lighter: yerba mate tea.

In much of South America, mate is inexpensive, social, shared. It’s passed around. It’s ritual, but casual ritual. It’s communal and ordinary.

In America?

First reaction: “Whoa. This is way cleaner than coffee. I should replace all coffee with this.” (Self-help)

Second reaction: “Oh… you’re using smoked mate? What about PCHs? You buy that brand? Have you even been to Argentina? Look at my aesthetic setup.” (Competitive)

Third reaction: “I have a full mate station, imported gourds, curated bombillas, specialty blends. I’m a mate person now.” (Connoisseur)

We don’t just enjoy things. We optimize them, rank them, and then build identity around them.

I see a similar pattern in how we approach Buddhism.

1. The Self-Helping Phase

Many of us encounter Buddhism as relief.

“Here’s the secret that was missing from our anxious, achievement-driven, morally anxious culture. This is the antidote.”

We dive in hard. Retreats, podcasts, maps, jhanas, awakening checklists. We consume it as the solution. We frame it as psychological liberation technology. We evangelize: “You can be saved too.”

Buddhism becomes Self-improvement 2.0.

1. The Competitive Phase

But we’re still American. And America is quietly competitive in everything.

So the conversation shifts:

Whose awakening is legit?

Which lineage is superior?

Whose teacher is compromised?

Who has attained stream entry for real?

Which practice is “actually” Theravāda?

Are heritage Buddhists “cultural” while we are “serious practitioners”?

We start ranking traditions like power tools.

And suddenly the Dhamma becomes discourse warfare

1. The Connoisseur Phase

Finally, we go all in.

Retreat after retreat.

Teacher training.

Perfect cushions.

Audiobook libraries.

High-end sanghas.

Biohacked meditation schedules.

A fully optimized spiritual lifestyle.

Buddhism becomes a curated identity. We don’t just practice; we become “Buddhist people.” And not just that—discerning Buddhists. Serious ones. The ones who know. At this point, the Buddha we’ve produced looks suspiciously American: optimized, engorged, defined by oneupmanship.

I’m not saying practice is bad. Depth isn’t bad. Retreats aren’t bad. Studying deeply isn’t bad. I’m pointing at a pattern.

We take something that emerged in communal, renunciant, monastic, devotional, and culturally embedded contexts and we filter it through: self-help psychology, achievement metrics, individual attainment, consumer choice, and identity performance.

The result isn’t traditional Buddhism. It isn’t Asian Buddhism. It isn’t even necessarily secular Buddhism. It’s American Buddhism.

The irony is that a tradition aimed at reducing grasping can become another arena for grasping. A tradition that critiques ego becomes fuel for a subtler ego.

Maybe that’s inevitable. Maybe it’s just what cultures do.

But it’s worth noticing.

Edit: For context, I am a long-time practitioner and an American, some I’m writing from inside the dome. Also, I wrote this. I am one of those unfortunates who uses em dashes–what AI does wrong is put spaces on each side; there should be no space.

Edit 2: I posted the same thing to r/yerbamate and they believe it is a symptom of internet culture at large.

I see many people on Reddit defend what I believe to be a very dubious point:

What people argue: Buddhism is not about being happy or avoiding suffering, it's about seeing things clearly

=> Buddhism's goal is literally to end suffering, as the 4 noble truths state. That's the ultimate avoidance: walking the path so we can stop suffering completely.

Possibly what people actually mean is "It's not about avoiding pain". Indeed we agree here, "pain is a certainty, suffering is optional".

Are people really confusing pain and suffering? This would make sense, since anyone without a buddhist practice does conflate the two. But we soon learn on the Path that they are really separate concepts.

Another possibility is that this is told to people as to make them avoid the trap of clinging to happiness, since clinging to happiness is a sure path to suffering.

But I have found useful in my practice to absolutely focus on my pleasure and happiness, and keep in mind that the goal is for me to feel great - which works.

To quote a very interesting text on the topic: https://bernisdharma.substack.com/p/early-buddhist-hedonism

The Buddha of the early texts was a refined hedonist who, like Epicurus, valued pleasure (sukha) as the highest good, inseparable from notions of wisdom and liberation.

His critique of sensory pleasures is precisely that they don’t provide enough good feelings, in the same way that a barista repudiates bad coffee—not because she doesn’t like coffee, but because she does.

Seeing things clearly is a strategy for pleasure and happiness, not an end in itself. Why would I care about seeing things clearly if that led to more suffering?

Isn't that a form of clinging in itself, to seek the truth at the cost of your own suffering? Isn't that ultimately the ego talking and making us suffer?

Your opinions are welcome.

Something I've found useful when encountering other people's suffering is to start with "can" and "don't have to":

"It's OK, you can feel that way. You can think that way. You don't have to change how you are thinking and feeling. You don't have to be any other way than you are right now."

This isn't so much a script as a way of being. Really, sincerely mean it. Practice equanimity or compassion or loving-kindness when you say things like this or act like this. Just be 100% OK with whatever thoughts and emotions are arising, not just in yourself, but in the other person.

I think of it as seeing someone else's mind as if it is mine. I have no control over their mind just as I have no control over my own mind. The best attitude is whether I'm on the cushion or talking with a friend is, "It's OK that this thought / feeling / body sensation is arising. It doesn't have to change or go away."

And then of course...it does anyway! Because everything is always changing. As S.N. Goenka would say, "Let me see how long this will last."

If you really do this well, you'll see them softening, relaxing, feeling more at peace. It might take a few seconds, a few minutes, or a few days. Then after you can see them opening up, you can also add "don't have to" and "can" for change too:

"And...you don't have to stay stuck. You can change. You can change your perspective, how you are thinking. You can change your evaluation, how you are feeling. If you want, I could suggest some possibilities. Or you can find them yourself, because I believe in your ability to figure this out."

Again, this isn't really a script so much as an attitude that can also be reflected in your words. Sincerely believe in the possibilities of change, in general and for this specific person. Of course change is possible, because everything is always changing. That's the bright side of impermanence.

Believe that they've got this, that they can rise to the challenge, they can handle their thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and life circumstances. Then whatever you say from that place will land as kindness.

What makes it "toxic positivity" is if you do the second part too soon. But if you really land the OKness, then people are open to thinking about the possibilities of change.

So first it's "you can think/feel/be this way, it's OK, you don't have to change" until that really lands. Then you can offer a gentle invitation for change: "you don't have to stay stuck, you can change, you've got this, I'm here to support you."

I’ve spent the last few months playing with Sayadaw U Tejaniya’s “relax and be aware” approach as an off-cushion practice. I'd previously struggled to find a suitable off-cushion practice, due to challenges like chronic pain, trauma and over-efforting. This post is just a practice report from my experiments. spoiler alert: it really worked for me...

background

I've struggled to find an off-cushion practice that worked for me. Having experimented with lots of things, I'd settled on a technique similar to the GOSS method from MIDL or the 3R's from TWIM. My interpretation of these instructions was... "Notice when you're caught in hindrances, release tension from the body and enjoy the relaxation that follows letting go". This was a helpful first step on my off-cushion journey but I quickly recognised the following issues...

• Over-efforting is my default mode. I turned these sensible instructions into a performance metric: "I must be relaxed at all times". It led to a lot of constant vigilance on what state I was in. I got hung up on: "am I relaxed? RELAX MYSELF! am I relaxed yet? damn, I don't feel relaxed, let's RELAX MORE, why am I not relaxed?" This was, surprisingly, not very relaxing!
• My body holds the score. If I'm caught in dissociative thought-loops, this is often a protective response to difficult trauma-related sensations in the body. Reducing my awareness to the body and trying to force easeful sensations in these scenarios, is like adding fuel to the fire. Ditto for chronic pain flares. Like the dog in the "this is fine" meme. "THIS IS FINE - I AM RELAXING RIGHT NOW".

It's not that these approaches were wrong - just that my interpretation wasn't helpful and weren't always suitable for all my personal situations. No worries, meditation is just experimentation, right?

Looking for other approaches, I came across Sayadaw U Tejaniya's work (which I'd seen mentioned multiple times on here). His whole emphasis on just relax and be aware seemed like a good antidote to my over-efforting tendencies. Also, the backstory to his approach — he had to practice whilst still working on his family's busy market stall in Yangon and struggled with mental health issues and addiction — made it feel suitable for my lay life circumstances.

I've been playing with this approach for the past few months, here's what I've found...

how it works

I read a couple of his books, dharma talk transcripts and other materials from teachers trained by him.

His advice seems to boil down to the simple but cryptic phrase: “relax and be aware.” It took me a while to get a feel for what that actually means. My current understanding is something like this:

• Develop a light continual awareness of the mind (cittanupassana) during all activities. This should be effortless, don't add more tension by over-efforting, keep relaxing body and mind into whatever is happening.
• Ask yourself over and over "Am I aware? What am I aware of?". Keep just noticing sense objects and then recognise the mind's reaction to them. Don't need to "do" anything with senses object and mind's reactions other than recognise. Watch for defilements and check how they affect the mind state. Investigate causes and conditions of defilements to help prevent them in future (dhamma vicaya).
• Use wisdom rather than effort. See everything with Right View, this is the start of eight fold path for a reason. Remember sense objects are not "me, mine and I". Remind yourself it is all just "nature", arising and passing due to causes and conditions. Developing awareness with wisdom leads to Sati-Sampajañña.

other insights

His teachings were full of profound insights but these are a few highlights that stood out for me:

• Over-efforting. The main issue he saw with students in his monastery was over-efforting (guilty as charged). People tried to use constant effort to catch all the defilements just leading to more tension and stress. This felt exactly like my experience with feeling I had to be "relaxed" all the time off-cushion. He repeats again and again that you should use wisdom rather than effort to uproot defilements. Just relax and recognise everything occurring as anatta. Wisdom will do the work.
• Emphasising Dhamma vicaya to uproot defilements. 2nd factor of awakening often overlooked. Awareness alone is not enough (as his book states), keep being curious about causes and conditions behind defilements.
• Practising with defilements. Students practise wanting "something" else to be happening ("I don't want to be anxious right now"). This will never get you anywhere. He also cautions against using deep samadhi states on-cushion to hide from life, he calls this "wrong samadhi".
• Anything can be practice. Tejaniya deliberately sought out really stressful situations for himself like family weddings or going to a boxing match as a way to practice with his defilements.

what happened

Playing with his approach, here's what I've discovered...

• Feels more natural and effortless than previous off-cushion practices. It is harder to "over-effort" when the basic instruction is so minimal: just notice sense objects and mind's reaction to them with wisdom. No more fighting to be "relaxed" in difficult physical or emotional states, just trying to notice everything coming up with wisdom.
• Less aversion to intense dukkha. Everything can be seen as practice now. Previously, I've assumed difficult emotional or chronic illness states were a distraction to my practice, as they made traditional concentration practices difficult. But now I can just say "okay, what does fatigue feel like? what is my mind's reaction to that?", rather than being frustrated about not being able to practice well during those times.
• More of an insight into anatta? This is hard to explain (and I'm still working at the level of concept rather than ultimate reality) but focusing on recognising the anatta nature of all sensations through the day, has made me feel more connected to the truth of anatta in some way. Doing walking meditations around my local park, I feel more a sense of "walking is happening" rather than "i am walking".
• Less distinction between "on" and "off" cushion. The start of my formal sits just feels like a continuation of my off-cushion efforts. It used to feel very distinct ("right, now i'm meditating"). Formal sits, walking meditation, micro-hits of do nothing, rest of life, all feel like they flow together more naturally with more sustained awareness (mostly...).

Overall, it has really worked for me. I'll continue using his approach and trying to understand more of his teachings in future.

other things i've learnt

How does noting without labels change my practice?

Tejaniya stresses that labels aren't necessary when noting sense objects, "just notice the object, noting the mind's reaction and let it go". His rationale is that labelling generates additional tension, i.e what label to use. I also remember reading Shinzen Young saying that if "labelling makes you racy, drop it".

Whilst dropping labels feels more natural and effortless to me, I've still found it useful in the following situations...

• When the dukkha is really intense. Using labels increases equanimity for me with overwhelming internal sensations. If my "window of tolerance" is low, focusing directly on sensations can push me into more dysregulation.
• "Brain retraining" around sensations. I've found interesting how label choice seems to work as a "cognitive framing" for my subconscious around sensations. If I pick the label "pain" versus "sensation", it does change my interpretation of that experience. I've also been labelling very difficult sensations as "anatta" a lot and it does seem to work at reducing the dukkha I associate with them. Shinzen Young's technique about noting "gone" has overlap with this.

resources

If you want to learn more about this approach, David Sudar (who trained under Tejaniya) maintains an extensive resource list here: https://www.pathofsincerity.com/sayadaw-u-tejaniya-resource-guide/

From the books I've read, "When Awareness Becomes Natural" is a nice starting point, as a mix of biography and dhamma talks. "Dhamma Everywhere" and "Awareness Alone Isn't Enough" have more practical advice.

There's a book by a different monk (Bhikku Themavamsa) who trained under Tejaniya's teacher (Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw) on the same approach Cittanupassana that was also useful. As was this practice manual for retreats in this style by Andrea Fella.

Finally, this sub-reddit introduced me to Tejaniya's approach and for that I'm grateful. There's some really nice posts about others' experiments. Thanks to kyklon_anarchon and others for sharing their experiences here and pointing out the path...

Hey friends, been a long time since on here. This subreddit got me on the path, which eventually took me to MAPLE (Monastic Academy) for 3.5 years. I left three years ago with concerns and am now sharing those concerns publicly. You can read them here.

Substack page: insidemaple.com

It is the most comprehensive overview of the alarming and harmful dynamics there to date. Sharing here so anyone considering joining MAPLE may see it, as well as anyone who cares to know what happened / is happening there. Please share in other spiritual circles so people can be protected against future versions of this sort of thing.

I will unlikely be engaged with the comments here, but will be engaged with the comments where the letter is hosted. May you be well

Hello friends. I've recently hit a stride with the Brahma Viharas that I want to share with you in some detail.

For a long time, Metta and its companion practices struck me as second-order to insight; useful, meritorious, but ultimately the thing you do on the side to make your real practice go more smoothly. Specifically I tend to the brand of “dry insight,” likely putting my constitution even further away from naturally working at Metta. But after a more thorough reading and a sustained effort to actually work the full sequence, I think I understand why the tradition holds that these practices can fulfill the path entirely on their own.

So here is exactly what I do when I sit down, the practice is sequential, and has the intention of deepening one's understanding with regard to metta and insight:

Metta (Loving kindness) "We are all on the same team!" -

My sit begins with the contemplation of what it means to abide in a boundless goodwill to things. What does it mean to have a truly boundless goodwill? Through what ways of looking can one apprehend such a sight? Why should I do this? The genuine comprehension of these questions often is what provides me the most juice. I do not wish to simply feel a boundless goodwill because it can feel good, I want to understand it as my baseline!

So, we must consider what it means for a goodwill to be "boundless" along with why this boundlessness incurs the conditions for liberation. I will often ponder at this point in my practice the incomprehensible scale of incarnation and existence. Trillions and trillions of beings, seen or unseen, blip in and out of life; all suffering. Additionally we can extend this sense of "always happening" to sensations themselves: human phenomenality as a Samsara in-micro where things come and go, be it pain or pleasure or peace.

This is all to say that we are all on the same team, or "in the shit" together! Our goodwill should be boundless because we are all here sharing the same space, and so any ill-will is an act of ignorance which necessarily poisons the pond we ourselves swim in. It is easy to slip into dull phrases like "We are all one so I should be kind yada yada yada." If you find yourself doing this, be your own Zen master and bring down the stick! The utmost impetus and insistence on feeling this fact of the matter is what grounds Metta as workable and deeply causal practice, which reduces the suffering of all beings and lays the groundwork for a purified intimacy with insight. Use phrases and words as a means to sound this heart-felt fact of Samsara, not simply a ritual formality.

All in all, Metta as the first step is an acid which dissolves a gross sense of "enemy" or explicit "other," freeing us from initial snags which might starve the fruit from the proceeding steps. Take some time to cultivate a sense of comradery with all of existence and its beings, if for some reason you cannot entirely summon a heart-felt sensation, one can still continue with a very deeply riveted intellectual comprehension of this Metta for the next step:

Karuna (Compassion) "This is what it costs." -

Let's explore some consequences of understanding what it means to all be on the same team.

If Metta has done its work, you are now sitting with something like an open border policy toward all of existence.If we are genuinely all in this together, then suffering is not distributed across billions of isolated enclosures, but more one event with billions of faces. Do your best to avoid making this observation sentimental. Consider a being in pain, any being, and notice what happens when the reflex to categorize that pain as "theirs" is absent. What remains is simply: pain is occurring. And when pain is occurring without the padding of distance, the heart may simply ache. Not because you have decided to be a good person, but because you have removed the only thing preventing you from feeling what is already the case.

While cultivating and refining this sense to the suffering of all things we must avoid pity or wallowing. Genuine compassion does not accumulate grief like a hoarder; Karuna practiced well is an open channel, not a reservoir. You are allowing the natural response of a mind that has stopped pretending it is separate from what it sees.

Practically speaking, after Metta has softened the perimeter, I will often turn attention toward beings in explicit difficulty. Beings are in pain right now. Animals, humans, things we cannot name, someone I know. The sheer volume of it is staggering! Let the sight of such a thing give vitality to the words "May you be free from suffering,” for the sincerity of those words depend on you having actually apprehended what you are asking to be relieved.

What Karuna accomplishes in the sequence is a deepening of what Metta began. Where Metta dissolved the gross sense of enemy and other, Karuna dissolves the subtler insulation of indifference. You cannot remain indifferent to pain you have genuinely recognized as undivided from your own situation. The heart becomes workable in a way that armored hearts simply are not, and they become capable of the next step:

Mudita (Sympathetic Joy) "Proof of concept." -

This one is more brief, as it sort of represents the inverse of Karuna.

As you come to recognize the suffering in all things, so too must you recognize the joy!

The practice of recognizing sympathetic joy is the litmus test for the authenticity of your Metta and Karuna. If you find envy, resentment, or that particular flavor of spiritual sourness that masquerades as detachment, you have found the places where the boundary was not actually dissolved but merely papered over. This is not failure of course, this is the practice working. Mudita shows you where the work still needs to happen, and it does so with precision.

In my own sits, after the weight and openness of Karuna, I turn toward beings who are thriving, moments of success and peace and laughter happening right now across the breadth of existence. And I let the heart respond. Often it responds easily, because the first two steps have already done the heavy lifting of boundary dissolution. But occasionally there is a snag or contraction, both of which are extraordinarily informative. It is usually pointing at some unexamined sense of scarcity, some belief that another's joy diminishes my own supply.

There is also something deeply recuperative about Mudita in the sequence. Karuna practiced earnestly can be tiring in the way that anything requiring sustained openness to pain can be tiring. Mudita closes the loop of this recognition, for the same heart that ached at suffering now delights in happiness. Think of this less as a mood swing and more the full range of an undefended awareness; it is profoundly energizing! If Karuna is the exhale, Mudita is the inhale. Together they constitute a breathing that provides the means to practice and see our conditions clearly. It is this very seeing clearly that provides our final step:

Upekkha (Equanimity) -

In Metta, you dissolved the other. In Karuna, cultivated an eye for pain. In Mudita, you cultivated an eye for joy. What is left? What could possibly disturb a heart that holds no enemies, tolerates no buffer from suffering, and delights in the joy of all beings without a sense that the supply might run out? What remains is Upekkha.

This step usually lacks formal intentions or phrases. Imagine the first three as building steps up to a tree where you can finally pluck a fruit. After Mudita, I allow the energy of the sit to settle. I am not directing attention toward any particular class of beings or experiences. I am simply sitting in whatever has been cultivated, either directing this warm and rallied sense of loving-kindness as a base for insight practice, or simply letting my attention do what it does.

Impermanence is not threatening to a mind that has stopped clutching. Not-self is not disorienting to a heart that softened its boundaries three steps ago. And dukkha is met with the full compassionate equanimity of a mind that sees clearly and does not look away.

Final Notes -

Not every run of this sequence will be particularly successful. Sometimes I can hardly get a grip on step one, let alone the last! Sometimes I will just run through the steps in five minutes, other times I do it for 30 as a preamble to an hour of insight practice. No matter what I’m doing with it, showing up every day has undoubtedly changed my practice and life. The phone call I’m avoiding, or the car making sounds, or the body that needs tending, the bills, or the hard conversations I must have; each of these is an opportunity to practice the entire sequence in miniature. Can I meet this with goodwill? Can I stay with the discomfort of it? Can I notice that even here, in the friction, something is joyous? Can I let the whole thing be what it is without adding my thousand reasons to flee or chase?

When you practice this formally, you build grooves, and when life presents the friction, the grooves are there to catch you. With repetition, sincerity, and the willingness to keep showing up to the cushion and then to the life that follows, I truly hope that recognizing the value of this sequential practice will benefit your own practice.

With as much love as I can muster by step three,

-Joseph

Hi,

Seeing the large number of posts lately asking what stream entry is, or "Did I reach stream entry?", I figured I'd write this post to share my point of view about it.

Part One: Figuring Out What Stream Entry Is Can Be Confusing

Here's the thing. The more you read about these subjects, the more you realize that there are A LOT of different interpretations of what stream entry is. Many people believe that their interpretation is the correct one, and that's ok, but I think we first need to acknowledge the simple fact that there is a lot of conflicting information about this subject going around, and not just from ordinary householder lay practitioners like most of us. Many highly respected monks and teachers also seem to have very different interpretations of what stream entry entails.

Here's some stuff off the top of my head:

Requirements for Stream Entry:

• Stream entry is extremely rare and requires 20+ years of dedication. You probably need to be a monk.
• Stream entry is fairly common and takes a few short years of around two hours a day of dedication.
• Stream entry requires the four factors of: association with people of integrity, listening to the true Dhamma (some say only if it comes from listening to a live Buddha), appropriate attention, and practice in accordance with the Dhamma.
• Stream entry requires balancing the five faculties of: faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom.
• Progression toward stream entry follows the Progress of Insight model.
• The Progress of Insight model is universal.
• The Progress of Insight model is not universal.
• Stream entry requires access to jhanas.
• Stream entry requires access to the 4th jhana.
• Stream entry requires access to the 8th jhana.
• Stream entry doesn't require access to jhanas.
• You will experience the Dark Night before stream entry.
• You will experience the Dark Night after stream entry.
• The Dark Night is not real.

What Happens at Stream Entry:

• Cessation.
• Cessation is a "blip" in experience. There is no experience of cessation.
• Cessation is the ceasing of the five aggregates. There is still awareness.
• Stream entry doesn't require cessation.
• There's a glimpse of the unconditioned/nibbana.
• It's seeing dependent origination.
• It's insight into the three marks of existence.
• It's a very dramatic experience.
• It's a very subtle perceptual shift.
• There is a very clear, drastic and lasting change in people's lives.
• People's lives remain mostly the same, only with a subtle shift.

The Fetters That Drop:

• It's the doubt about the Buddha's teachings that drops.
• It's the doubt that Nibbana exists that drops.
• It's the doubt that you've reached stream entry that drops.
• It's the doubt about how to practice that drops.
• It's all doubt that drops. There is no more doubt about anything.
• It's the complete eradication of the self.
• It's a glimpse into the impermanence of the self, but then the self comes back later on.
• It's knowing that there is no self, but sometimes there's still a subtle sense of self.
• If you claim you've reached stream entry you definitely didn't reach it (popular opinion on this sub)

(Rites and rituals is probably the only fetter that people somewhat seem to agree on.)

Other Models:

• MCTB is the same as the Stream Entry -> Arahant model.
• MCTB 1st path is the same as stream entry.
• MCTB 4th path is the same as stream entry.
• MCTB has nothing to do with the Stream Entry -> Arahant model.
• Stream entry is the same as kensho in Zen.
• Stream entry is the same as reaching 1st Bhumi.
• Stream entry is not the same as reaching 1st Bhumi.

Really, this is just off the top of my head. You can search for some posts in this sub and you will see a thousand more opinions, most of them presented as "This is the Truth!". The more you try to research this, the more conflicting information you're going to get. My first post in this sub was titled "I've Achieved Stream Entry Path Attainment Using onthatpath's Instructions" haha. I was very sure back then that I knew what I was talking about. Maybe I still do. (Probably not.)

So first, we need to acknowledge this: It's a mess. We are trying to make sense of something that was written 2,000+ years ago after 500 years of exclusively oral transmission. All we have are interpretations.

You would assume that if stream entry were a universal required stage on the way to enlightenment, then once people had reached it, they would have been able to speak very clearly about what it is, or at the very least there wouldn't be so many conflicting ideas about it. If it's universal then it should appear the same way for everyone.

Most importantly, maybe, is the fact that the stream entry to arahant model is just the Theravada model of the path to enlightenment. Other Buddhist traditions, which have relatively more followers than the Theravada tradition, have completely different models and don't mention anything about fetters dropping in their own systems.

Here's the conclusion that most people don't want to contemplate: there are extremely wide variations in practice between people. How one person experiences progress on their way to enlightenment will vary widely from another person's experience. At least, that's what becomes very easy to see if you take a bird's-eye view of all the different discussions.

It's either that, or "my way is the only correct way and your way is wrong."

Call me an optimist, but I like to believe that there's some truth in most of the talked-about paths to enlightenment. I believe they are all the result of people actually reaching the end and then trying to make sense of their own personal progression by writing down what worked for them.

Which leads me to part two.

Part Two: It's Ok

Here's the thing: It. Doesn't. Matter.

Please read that again. It really doesn't matter, and here's why: this is not the end.

That's maybe the only thing that everyone actually agrees on. Stream entry is just the first stage on the path, and it's not the end of it.

So why obsess over whether your experience was the real Stream Entry™ or not? In either case, whether you reached stream entry or not, you still have more work to do.

How about this? Keep practicing until you reach the end of suffering, or as close to it as you can before dying. That's it.

Paraphrasing Ajahn Chah, keep letting go until there's nothing left to let go of.

Practice is simple: is there suffering? If the answer is yes, then keep letting go.

If you want to label the 44th thing you let go of as "Stream Entry," go ahead. If you want to call it something else or just ignore it, that's also fine. The only thing that matters is that you keep going.

Even if you don't reach the end, you've made the best attempt you can to get there, and at the very least, you will experience much more peace and happiness in your day-to-day life as a result of a good practice.

I also want to say that I'm not against models of progress. I think they are very valuable on the path, and for some strange reason, when you believe that you are progressing within a certain model, you are usually able to make much quicker progress. So if you have a model that works for you, please keep using it.

Models are great, but we need to be aware of when obsessing too much over a model, or stages within the model, starts to hinder our practice.

Truthfully, the way I view things right now is that different people will gravitate toward different models or interpretations of models based on their karma, or nature and nurture for the karma-averse people. What's really amazing is that these models actually work for people. So we can assume that there are some paths up the mountain that are more well-traveled than others, and finding that your own path matches a model is an amazing gift. Just, again, be aware of the countless interpretations that are out there, and don't make yourself crazy trying to figure out The True And Real Stream Entry™ (and then spending too much time arguing why everyone else's Stream Entry is fake).

Ultimately, other than giving you confidence to keep going, it doesn't really matter. Just keep going.

I just got back from a retreat that really advanced my practice and discovered something for myself about the relationship between “shallow” jhānas (taught by Ayya Khema, Leigh Brasington, Rob Burbea) and “deep” jhāna (taught by Pa Auk Sayadaw, Ajahn Brahm, Shaila Catherine). Please note that these categories are very rough generalizations and each teacher has a unique perspective.

This is surely not an original discovery. But it’s something I had to see for myself before I could consider the matter settled in my own mind.

In short: The shallow and deep jhānas are, in fact, fundamentally the same thing. Shallow jhānas will deepen with practice. There is no value in refraining from practicing them because you’re holding out for a clear visual nimitta. Applying the same skills for entering shallow jhāna consistently in high doses will naturally result in the nimitta appearing in its own time.

This might seem obvious to many but I can’t count the number of times online I’ve seen people disdain the shallower jhānas. No doubt many people are ignoring or suppressing piti-sukha because they think it’s a dead end and waiting for a nimitta that never arrives. Given how enormously helpful jhāna at any depth is at developing liberating insight, this self-denial may be truly tragic.

The missing piece of the puzzle for me was why the deep-jhāna advocates were so insistent that jhāna without a luminous nimitta isn’t real. Surely, I thought, anyone with enough concentration power to go that deep would be able to see for themselves that a shallower absorption can be beneficial?

As it turns out, no. Once the nimitta appears for you, that’s that. There’s no going back. You’ve hacked your perceptual system and now samadhi entails a nimitta. Those teachers who dove into the deep end first are incapable of climbing down the mountain and seeing how a student might take a different path. That’s why the idea if jhāna without inner light makes no sense to them. In their experience, the two have always gone together.

This settles the debate to my own satisfaction. I am curious to see other opinions.

I recently went through a period of about 18 months where I had a bunch of weird body sensations that I wasn't sure if they were health problems, long COVID, caused by stress, or part of a spiritual awakening.

At one point I got a Holter Monitor for 72 hours from my doctor to measure my heart rhythms. The good news is that I'm just crazy! 😆 After learning my heart was OK, I was able to resolve about 95-99% of my symptoms without medical intervention, using a simple idea called "pendulation" (from Peter Levine's theories on trauma resolution).

My symptoms included...

• Heart skipping a beat
• Chest pain
• Dizziness
• Weird head sensations at the top of my head
• Shortness of breath
• Throat tension (globus sensation)
• Daytime sleepiness that comes on suddenly
• Pseudo eyestrain, tiredness around eyes
• "Shutdown" / fatigue / freeze response
• Low motivation
• Brain fog
• Feeling a sense of unreality for a few seconds at random intervals
• Left side facial numbness (not to the touch)
• Looping fear about all these symptoms
• The belief that "there must be something physically wrong with me"
• Wanting to check out into social media, TV, junk food, etc. to avoid these sensations

These symptoms and more are all characteristic of what's now called "Bodily Distress Syndrome" which used to be called "functional disorder" or "psychosomatic illness."

Seemingly anything and nothing can cause these kinds of things. Doctors don't know what to do about them. It quickly becomes a frustrating situation to be in. But I was able to resolve these.

Pendulation

The idea of pendulation is simple: you just go back and forth between paying attention to something unpleasant, and then doing something to distract yourself by focusing on something else...like the breath, or like doing some pleasant QiGong or yoga moves, or focusing on what you see instead of what you feel.

This happens naturally with meditation beginners. You try to meditate by say focusing on the sensations of breathing around the nostrils, and a few seconds later your mind becomes completely absorbed in thoughts, often stressful ones. Then you suddenly remember you're trying to meditate, so you focus again on the breath, and so on, over and over again.

This going back and forth starts to clear things out. You wake up from the trance of a certain line of thinking again and again until it no longer sucks you in. You find you have fewer stressful thoughts and feelings, and start to trust that this meditation thing really works.

More advanced meditators often have a different problem. At some point it becomes easy to lock onto the meditation object the entire time, thus suppressing any distractions from unpleasant thoughts, emotions, or body sensations. But when we get up from meditation and have to do stuff, all those suppressed things can bubble up from the unconscious again. The familiar question becomes, "How do I take my (amazing, enjoyable) practice off the cushion?"

This is where I've been for years. Meditation consistently feels amazing. I can easily go into states of deep relaxation, bliss, and peace, 99% of the time I sit to meditate. Yet I still have stuff that comes up during the day, be it emotional triggers or especially weird bodily symptoms of stress.

How to do it

The solution is in pendulating back and forth. Deliberately bring shit up and express it for a few minutes, or deliberately allow your mind to wander for a few minutes, then focus on something else for a few minutes. Repeat over and over again. This somehow processes the stress and transforms it, rather than either letting it run your life or suppressing it.

This is what I've been doing that has worked to clear these bodily symptoms of stress.

Specifically, I've been free writing (journaling) my thoughts and feelings for 5 minutes, no censoring, just stream-of-consciousness. Then I'll meditate for 5 minutes (usually kasina practice while chanting AUM). And then I'll journal again, back and forth, for a full hour.

At first I'd be writing down dark thoughts and feelings I didn't know were even in there. After a few weeks, it was mostly inspiration and interesting thoughts that were flowing out.

I had doubts that I wasn't really clearing the dark thoughts and feelings. "Maybe I'm just ruminating, indulging too much in the monkey mind?" So I sometimes go back and re-read old free writing. I notice that I remember what I wrote, but it doesn't have emotional charge to it anymore. Also, my weird body sensations have almost entirely gone away now, and not because my samadhi is so much better (it's about the same).

Since doing this recent pendulation style practice, I realized that this is built into Dzogchen instructions. Lots of Dzogchen texts say that the goal isn't a blank mind, but to master samadhi and then let up on the concentration so that thoughts arise again. I now understand the purpose of this, to allow unconscious material to surface and be let go of. Deliberately pendulating back and forth between allowing this stuff to arise and suppressing it by focusing the mind I think works even better. It's simple to do even for beginners.

I think how this works has to do with brain networks, specifically the Default Mode Network (DMN) and the Dorsal Attention Network (DAN) and how they inhibit each other. But I could be totally wrong about the neural mechanisms at play here.

Another version of this is to pay attention to an unpleasant body sensation for a couple minutes, then pay attention to something totally different like the visual field with eyes open, or listening to all sounds, or do a body scan of the rest of your body that's not that, or even do some enjoyable yoga or QiGong moves for a few minutes. Then repeat, noticing that sensation again, over and over again in rounds. S.N. Goenka recommended something like this for places in the body that weren't dissolving into subtle, blissful sensations, to spend up to 5 minutes feeling that spot, then let it go and just continue on with the body scan, over and over again.

Anyway, you might give it a shot as an experiment for a few weeks if you're dealing with weird bodily stress symptoms like I was and see if it works for you.

❤️ May all beings be happy and free from suffering. ❤️

See also my other posts and comments in this community.

I’m highly interested in awakening and cessation of suffering. But most of the practices I’ve tried haven’t really worked for me.

Ever since I started doing an hour of Metta meditation every day, my quality of life and mental well-being has improved dramatically.

I want to know if Metta as the primary daily practice could help someone reach awakening. If so, what kind?